chapter eight
That night, Au Co dreamed of fire. Scorching, abysmal heat, that consumed her entire being. It choked her screams, smoke wreathed around her neck and shoulders like a chain of smokey quartz, glittering around her collarbone. The smell of burning flesh, of gasoline, muzzled her like she was a feral animal, consuming, choking- but the fire, it sizzled into her bones, and they cracked under the heat and danced and licked along her skin-
Like his touch. His long slender hands ghosted over arms and ignited a fire deep in her belly, just as consuming the fire before, his eyes- dark, alluring and steady the color of edged obsidian, shifting to a bloodred like the fire. Pupils slitting, irses ablaze, his hand on hers as they walked through the hallway-
Au Co awoke with a scream caught in her chest. It smouldered, like fire, so much like the one she just vividly felt scorching her skin and bones.
“Au Co?”
The lights flickered on in her room, and in the doorway stood My Nuong orange hair awry, a fleece blanket tossed around her shoulders. My Nuong rubbed her puffy eyes and blearily peered through the sharp light of the room.
“Are you okay? I heard you screaming.”
“I- I-” Au Co stared at her hands in her lap, shaking.
“Hey,” she slid into the bed next to Au Co. “What happened?”
Au Co barely registered it. Fire sang in her veins, her head hazy with smoke.
“He was b-burning. I felt it.”
She felt so small, so weak. Visceral. Like the fire had burned away her skin, peeled off any layers of pretense, laying the truth bare.
“Who?” My Nuong rubbed a comforting hand down her friend’s back.
“I- I don’t know how or why, I think-I think it’s Sung Lam-” Au Co choked off a sob.
My Nuong’s brown eyes sharpened. “Is he in trouble?”
“No, I think this was old- it was like a memory, seeing through the eyes of a child…”
My Nuong swore under her breath. “I think you dreamed of the accident.”
Au Co sniffled. My Nuong handed her a tissue. While blowing her nose, Au Co managed to get out, “What accident?”
My Nuong’s eyes widened. “Don’t you know? I mean, I figured you’d have to living in the city at this point for this long.”
Au Co glared halfheartedly, rather waterily, at My Nuong. “No, stupid girl from the hills right? Lived isolated, away from the majority of society, reading self-aggrandizing history textbooks about an all-powerful queen.”
My Nuong rubbed her own shoulders apprehensively. “The last emperor, Sung Lam’s father, married for love and refused to breed for bloodlines. They were a small family, as a result. The accident- well, it wiped all of them out. A bad car crash, only Sung Lam survived, and his grandfather too, by virtue of not being there.”
Au Co cocked her head inquisitively trying to focus on her friend’s words. “Okay, that rings a bell. Sung Lam was the second son right? But was it that bad their family was so small? Aren’t there cousins or something too?”
My Nuong shook her head. “Yeah, but none of them are able to inherit the throne. It’s like how you tien have your colors-” she gestured to Au Co’s hair and eyes -”the dragons have their marks. But only certain dragons have royal marks, and only royal dragons can sit on the throne. It’s customary for the emperor or empress to take consorts, for spare heirs, you know. But Sung Lam’s father refused. So if Sung Lam hadn’t survived, it would have been the end of the line.”
“But like, his grandfather seems pretty young. Hardly looks like he’s a day over forty or something. Couldn’t he just like, you know, pop out another kid? Or take over himself?”
“Well, that’s complicated. Kings can’t reign for more than one life-time and Minh already abdicated so his son could take over. He can’t take the throne again. It’s some constitutional monarchy stuff, political things implemented after the War and stuff. Humans used to elect presidents and stuff under the idea of democracy, but things changed, of course, when you have all-powerful dragon kings and queens destined to rule Viet Nam by literal divine birthright. And Minh may look young, but that guy is thousands of years old. I’m not sure he could even have biological children anymore.”
Au Co whistled. “Damn, that really sucks for Sung Lam. Spare tire thrust into the spotlight.”
“Yeah.” My Nuong fiddled with a stray thread on the blanket. “There’s a sadness about him. I don’t think he’s been very loved in his lifetime.”
Au Co bit her lip. “That’s true, yeah. I mean, he’s rich and gorgeous and everyone is totally gaga over him, but Minh doesn’t seem like the supportive kind of grandfather. He does kind of treat Sung Lam like a means to an end.”
My Nuong nodded. “I’m willing to bet Minh will try to play Sung Lam like a fiddle. Figurehead emperor, and all that. At least, until he can produce heirs and prove himself independent.”
Au Co wrinkled her nose and side-eyed My Nuong. “You’re seriously not thinking of marrying him, are you?”
The princess’s eyes bugged out of her head. “Oh, Gods no, please. I mean, I’m sure the sex would be amazing and we’d be a power couple but- Gods, no.”
Au Co gagged. “Please do not talk about having sex with him in my presence.”
“Okay, but like have you seen that man’s biceps? How often must he work out? The tabloids are going absolutely insane over him, speculating who he’s dating and who’s gonna be the new queen or king. I mean, our kids would be gorgeous-”
“Okay, yeah, shut the fuck up-” Au Co slapped her hand over her friend’s face, despite My Nuong’s protests- “thank you for making me feel better about literally feeling myself burn to death, okay, now please shut up and let me sleep and not think about you boning Mr. Princey Pants, thank you-”
She herded her protesting friend out of the door, shouldering My Nuong’s petite person out of the room without much effort. As she closed the door in her friend’s face, My Nuong stuck out her tongue, but belatedly scampered back off to her own room.
Au Co breathed. Just stood there with her forehead against the cool wooden door, feeling the dissipated heat skitter over her skin.
xxx
The next morning, in the lab, she spilled LB broth all over the countertop, nearly sprayed herself in the face with ethanol, and very closely avoided mixing up her labeled dilutions of e. coli suspended in medium.
“Okay, that’s it. What’s on your mind?”
Lumine slammed her hand down on the countertop, the bulge of her wedding ring apparent under her blue latex gloves. The busty woman brushed a wayward strand of blonde hair that fell out of her ponytail, and fixed Au Co with those sharp amber eyes.
Au Co cringed. “How do you know something’s on my mind?”
The good doctor rolled her eyes. She took the two flasks of the e. coli dilutions from Au Co’s hands, and placed them correctly in their spots into the incubator. “You nearly walked into the wall this morning in lab from being distracted, there are bags deeper than the goddamn Marianas Trench under your eyes, and you know, you look like shit in general.”
“Okay, so yeah, um, some shit might have happened.”
Lumine pulled up two chairs from their little sequestered corner of the laboratory. The lab was located in one of the basement cellars in one of the older buildings on campus, and it was rather dreary at times. During the war, it was renovated as a bomb cellar for scientists conducting nuclear research to hide in during the air raids. Little did they know among them were Mystics, lying in wait, praying to survive, just like the rest of them.
The lab was a long room, with rows of lab benches and equipment strewn about them. Despite it being the early afternoon, only a few people were truly present. They meandered about in their lab white coats, with their android lab assistants in tow, not paying Lumine or Au Co much attention in the small workbench that constituted their little lab. The plate mixer whirred, and Au Co watched as the amber liquid inside the wells sloshed about rhythmically.
“Alright, talk. Did My Nuong get mobbed again by paparazzi?”
Au Co shook her head. “No, I mean, that happened last week- but this was different. Emperor Minh, and the Crown Prince, stopped by- for dinner, they said. And, well, Minh said-” Au Co grimaced- “he wanted My Nuong to find Thuy Tinh. Sung Lam is helping.”
A shadow passed over Lumine’s face. Her amber eyes temporarily went glassy, her coral-painted lips thinning. “Is he, now?”
Au Co narrowed her eyes. “I know you were the royal family’s doctor back in the day. And that you were, well, the doctor on call that night.”
The night that shall not be named. The night that changed her life, unfortunately, for better or for worse.
“Yes, and what of it?” Lumine replied, not testily, but carefully, as it not to divulge too much of whatever she was hiding.
“Why do I get the feeling that you’re not happy about this development?”
Lumine pursed her lips.
“When he was 14, I went to visit him in the manor at Da Lat. He was a quiet little thing. Had been ever since his parents and brother died. He had- scars, from the fire, don’t tell him I told you that- and so he was kept in the estate to be tutored privately.”
Au Co frowned. “That’s kind of fucked up to do to a 14 year old.”
Lumine nodded, pausing to brush a speck of dust off her immaculate lab coat. “I went to see him. The staff, his caretaker, they were worried. He had always been more reserved than Long Quan, but… you know how royalty value their face. Minh didn’t let any psychiatrist or doctor see him after the initial treatment in-hospice.”
There was something unfailingly sad to that. Royalty or not, they were people, maybe not human, but people all the same with the same capacity of pain and trauma just as any other sentient being. To deny a child, of all things, help like that? Just to pretend everything was okay, the glitz and glam for the public?
That was sick. And it was absolutely something her parents would do. But Au Co brushed that thought away.
“So, you know, they were getting worried that he would… do something irreversible. They asked me to come in. And just… his eyes. There was something very wrong. And when I asked him? He turned, looked me dead in the eye and just said, ‘I will kill them. I will make them pay. All of them.” Lumine shuddered.
“You don’t think… he came back to the city with his own motive?”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if he did. I don’t get the feeling he’s the kind of person to hurt people to get what he wants… but he certainly does have his own agenda. Whether he came back because it was his time to debut in society, or for something else, or even both, I can’t say. Only he could.”
Au Co thought about that for a second. Did she really trust Sung Lam to help My Nuong? It was true she didn’t really think he would purposely put her or My Nuong in the way of danger just to get what he wanted. But there was more to him than met the eye.
But he and My Nuong had something she didn’t- experience and connections in the city. She wasn’t much good for else than a glorified, nerdy bodyguard for My Nuong. One that could snap femurs in half without so much of a blink of an eye, granted, but nothing of intel or otherwise. But Lumine…
Au Co chewed her lip. She knew the rumors about her professor. The reason she stopped using her Vietnamese name. Her reputation as the “Pearl Princess,” daughter of minor nobility. How her father had tried to kill her and her lover both after discovering their affair. How she was the only one who survived.
Lumine twisted her lips to the side. “You’re going to ask me for a favor, aren’t you.”
“I wasn’t that obvious, was I?”
“No, but I know you. If you want to find Thuy Tinh, you would smash in every cranium from here to Thailand to find him. And I know you don’t know people in the city… but I do.”
“I have more finesse than that,” Au Co scoffed, mildly affronted. Just because she had super strength didn’t mean she used it all of the time. Mostly.
Lumine quirked a smile. “There is a woman. Her name is Tam, or at least that’s the name she goes by. She’s Chinese-Vietnamese. Does a lot of work here in the city. The kind of work that gets paid well, the kind where she cleans up a lot of messes. Do you get my drift?”
Au Co’s eyebrows lifted. A mercenary? Not an uncommon profession, given most big cities’ underworld dealings and dwellings.
Some things got worse after the War.
“How is she supposed to help me?”
Lumine didn’t meet Au Co’s eyes. She fiddled with a pipette on the lab bench. “She helped me get out of the city. Undercover. Back then. If anyone can track Thuy Tinh down… or at the very least, help you, it’s her.”
Au Co placed a hand over her professor’s. “Thank you.”
Lumine raised her luminous golden eyes to Au Co’s. Unlike Au Co’s sharp yellow, hers were the color of honey. And there was something unfathomably sad. Something passed through her gaze, and she opened her mouth to say something, but as she did, Au Co’s holocom beeped.
A blue shadow of My Nuong projected above the disk. She waved her hands frantically.
“Go to the Imperial Palace! Sung Lam called. He’s got a lead.”
With that, she blipped away.
Au Co cast a weary, long-suffering sidelong look at Lumine. “Duty calls.”
A forlorn smile, but a smile nonetheless, “Good luck.”